I want to start this review by writing about the back of the box of Kellogg’s Honey Nut Frosted Flakes.

It’s pure edutainment. It’s as if a Highlights for Children magazine, Where’s Waldo book, and the Wikipedia entry for honey got put into a stew.

I haven’t been paying attention to the back of cereal boxes lately, but this one is mwah. You might be thinking puzzles on the back of a cereal box are super easy and you could solve them before the third spoonful enters your mouth. But these aren’t. I mean, they aren’t as difficult as a Saturday or Sunday New York Times Crossword puzzle, but they seem to stimulate my mind slightly more than the cereal impresses my tongue.

The puzzles include finding six spoons in the scenery, finding a four-leaf clover in a patch of three-leaf clovers, and going through a honeycomb maze. Plus, there’s this tidbit (or tidbuzz?) on the box: Honeybees visit more than 2,000,000 flowers just to make one pound of honey. Did you know that? I didn’t, but now I do thanks to this box.

As others on the internet have pointed out, Kellogg’s Honey Nut Frosted Flakes seems like it’s meant as payback at General Mills for coming out with Lucky Charms Frosted Flakes last year that featured a font similar to what Kellogg’s uses with its Frosted Flakes. A later box design came with a different font, but it seems Kellogg’s didn’t forget what the Big G did. So here we are with a cereal to compete with Honey Nut Cheerios.

While they both are “honey nut” cereals, their flavors are entirely different. Both use real honey, but Buzz the Bee should be jealous because the frosted corn flakes are noticeably sweeter than the whole wheat oat pieces. But what might be helping with that is the natural sweetness from the corn itself.

Honey Nut Cheerios may have a lighter sweetness, but it’s much nuttier. This might be because natural almond flavor is one of the cereal’s main ingredients, while the Kellogg’s cereal makes no mention of nuts in the ingredients. This difference is perhaps the reason why the flakes taste, at times, like original Frosted Flakes. Because of that, I slightly prefer Honey Nut Cheerios over its corn flake competition.

But if you want something that’s flavorful and a little functional, then Honey Nut Cheerios is the clear winner. Both are fortified with vitamins and minerals, but because Cheerios is made with whole grains, they provide two grams of fiber per 3/4 cup serving. As for Honey Nut Frosted Flakes, its box has more fiber than the zero grams the cereal has.

DISCLOSURE: I received a free sample of the product. Doing so did not influence my review in any way.

Purchased Price: FREE
Size: 13.7 oz. box
Purchased at: Received from Kellogg’s
Rating: 6 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (3/4 cup) 110 calories, 0 grams of fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 150 milligrams of sodium, 35 milligrams of potassium, 26 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 10 grams of sugar, and 1 gram of protein.